around to the garage, probably from the outside.
Sam motioned Haley to run for the flaming door through which the shooter had disappeared. They found the man rolling in the hall, ripping off his jacket as he fought the flames.
'Extinguisher,' Sam said. He remembered one in the kitchen.
Sam grabbed it from the wall, hurried back to the man, kicked the pistol far away, and blasted the burning man with fire suppressant.
Haley came with a small bucket of water and a blanket to smother the flame.
Sam grabbed the groaning man by the shirt.
He screamed. He was burned badly over his back.
'Who'd you shoot?' Sam asked.
'I didn't shoot anybody,' the man said in great pain. 'Frick probably did.'
'Does Frick have any idea where Ben Anderson is?' asked Haley.
'No.'
'Are you really a deputy?' Sam asked.
The wounded man hesitated. 'Not normally. I'm from Las Vegas.'
Sam knew it was past time to leave. They left the burned man and the shot officer in the car to the medics that no doubt were in the front yard. He took a risk and led Haley, crouching low, through the back door and into the trees.
They heard more fire engines in the distance as they went. Sam ran as fast as he could.
It took a little over three minutes to make it back to the forest edge near Haley's. They both puffed a bit, Sam more from the pain than anything else. They stayed low in a swale, but Sam worried about the open forest and the fact that they had already put a man at Ben's. He considered their options. Other than Haley's car, which was hidden in the orchard, they had nothing but one of her rental motor scooters.
'You stay put. I'll go get your motor scooter out of the garage and we'll get out of here,'
Sam said.
'I'm supposed to stay here while you get shot? I'm coming.'
'So you can get shot too?' Sam sighed, exasperated that she wouldn't just do as he said.
'You stay here.' He said it as if he were a fighter on the verge of a brawl. For some reason it worked. She nodded but glared.
He and Haley were going to have to come to an understanding.
Under the circumstances the motor scooter was the best choice. Haley had concluded the same thing. She handed Ben's papers over to Sam and devoted herself to starting the scooter. Unfortunately, with every cop on the island looking for them, the odds of making it on the scooter were not good. They climbed on and it was a tight fit, like two big men on a burro. Haley drove because Sam grudgingly had to admit that he was more accustomed to Harleys. As they ran down the highway, moving away from Ben's, he hoped they wouldn't run into a cop before they could turn off Beaverton. Once they got onto Boyce and other back roads, he breathed a little easier. It was hard to think about motor scooters and traveling after having just read the startling words of a very serious man, a man who seemed to think that a relatively ordinary event-comparable, at least in metaphor, to a sigh- would precipitate a catastrophe-roasting or asphyxiating.
Dr. Ben Anderson had said, 'All dead.'
CHAPTER 12
Sam directed Haley to turn the motor scooter right onto Bailer Hill Road and then back to the southeast to a gravel drive that meandered past a house and led to an old barn.
'Why are we going to Rachael's?' Haley said over her shoulder, obviously surprised at their destination.
They dismounted and Sam pushed the motor scooter into the barn. Inside, he closed the doors and flipped on a set of fluorescent lights. As Haley watched, he pulled the tarp off his 1967 Corvette. Even without natural light it had a sheen that appeared three-dimensional, like the deep blue of the ocean.
'That's yours?'
Sam smiled. He put both piles of Ben's papers on the car hood.
'Oh, I get it,' Haley said. 'You didn't say anything because that would actually give us information about you. I'd have died thinking you drove a two-year-old Taurus. And Rachael was a perfect choice for you. She is one of the few people I know that can really keep a secret. How did you figure that out?'
'Ben told me. We discussed where to hide my car.'
'Ben told you?' she asked.
Again the surprise was evident. More like shock, Sam thought.
'I feel a little left out,' Haley said. 'She's my best friend.'
'Believe me, you weren't left out of much. Most of the time I've spent with Rachael was because you invited her to dinner at Ben's. Now let's talk about Ben's message in the National Geographic. Deadly sighs?'
'I have no idea what that means,' Haley said, her face still fallen. 'The rest I think I understand. You've heard that the rain forests are the lungs of the earth? Well, plankton use photosynthesis and they're equal to all the forests of the world as a major source of oxygen. Given that Ben's talking about the sea, I'd call plankton the lungs of the earth.
Some scientists have even suggested fertilizing the ocean to create more plankton to reduce CO and slow global warming. But it sounds like Ben's saying that's dangerous, 2 that if we make more plankton, we could have a big problem. I don't get that part.'
'Are you sure Ben was familiar with this plankton-feeding idea?'
'For sure. He and his friend Lattimer Gibbons argued about the effectiveness of the idea all the time.'
'He seems to be leading us somewhere. Where do you think?' Sam asked.
'Three possibilities: Lattimer Gibbons's place, Ben's office, or his beach house on Lopez.'
Sam nodded and signaled for her to continue.
'Ben was part of a joint invertebrate project with the University of Washington lab. The committee he was on published a series of articles that used the subtitle: 'The Ocean Breathes for the Earth.' So I'd look for his copies of those articles. He used to have them all in a bunch of binders in his office. We can't get back in there.'
'Maybe we can, maybe we can't. Tell me more about Lattimer,' Sam said. 'The few times I met him, he seemed odd. Anxious maybe, sort of fussy, but thoroughly devoted to Ben. Ben has always been patient.'
'You know what I know. He's a retired engineer. He and Ben used to argue about fertilizing the ocean. I don't know if you were around for any of those arguments.
Lattimer loved the idea and used to torture Ben with articles from other scientists who were touting it.'
'Could Lattimer have the binders? Or copies?'
'Yeah,' she said, 'he definitely could have some of it. Maybe some copies. He could have a lot of things.'
'And the same for Ben's old family beach house on Lopez?'
'There's deep-ocean stuff there, but that's actually related to the plankton because they die and rain down on the bottom.'
'So back to the sigh and everybody dies,' he said.
'I'm not following that part. At least not in relation to the plankton thing. But maybe Ben figured something out about that.'
'Lattimer strikes me as the type that might hide things for Ben,' he said.
'Yeah. And since his association with Ben is totally informal, I don't think anyone would think to look there. I could definitely see Ben hiding his real research with Lattimer. You know that nonconformist streak of his.'
'Or hiding with Lattimer himself,' Sam said. 'Let's go see Mr. Gibbons.'
Haley moved back toward the scooter, but Sam wasn't following her. Instead, he opened the trunk of the Corvette and removed and opened a small suitcase full of makeup.
Haley raised her eyebrows at the sight.
'This is pretty much what's left of my old life.'
'I wish you'd tell me about your old life.'
